Google and IBM are not the only ones working on AI. Microsoft has entered the field with its project: Project Adam.

Microsoft said in a blog post: "The goal of Project Adam is to enable software to visually recognize any object. It's a tall order, given the immense neural network in human brains that makes those kinds of associations possible through trillions of connections."

To start, Microsoft Research tested Project Adam on an image database containing 14 million images, which included images of dogs. At the faculty summit, a Microsoft researcher pointed a Windows Phone at a dog and asked Cortana to identify the breed. She correctly responded that it was a Rhodesian Ridgeback.




But Microsoft envisions a time when Project Adam could be used to determine the nutritional value of a meal by pointing your phone at the food. "Or, snap a photo of an unusual skin condition and get an accurate diagnosis. Or if you're out in the woods and need to know which plants are poisonous and which are edible, this is the technology that could help you do that," Microsoft said.